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The Fang

These cold, damp, excessively dark post-Christmas days and tempestuous nights just naturally lend themselves to spooky stories and here’s one of the most impressive from the tail end of last year, published by up-and-coming international publisher Markosia; courtesy of creative fear-meister Kostas Zachopoulos (Mon Alix, Mr. Universe, Misery City) and illustrated by gifted newcomer Christos Martinis.

Executed in stark and lavish painted colours reminiscent of Jon J. Muth, The Fang offers a fascinating possible postscript to the end of Bram Stoker’s epochal novel Dracula, wherein the weary but triumphant survivors of the battle against ultimate evil realise that their job is far from over…

The doom-drenched drama begins in ‘The story of Dracula’ aboard a battered sailing ship carrying gunpowder to America. The vessel is fatally cursed with a monstrous stowaway systematically slaughtering crewmen as she shudders through storm-wracked seas towards ‘A New World?’…

Back in England, Abraham Van Helsing, Quincey Morris and Jonathan Harker grudgingly accept that their battle against Dracula is not done. Now the long cold trail of the monster leads to New York.

However, by the time they reach the glittering “city of tomorrow” the ancient beast is firmly entrenched and feeding off a naive people, too smug and forward-looking to acknowledge the possibility of demons from ancient European history…

They’re all far too busy enjoying the tawdry delights of passing fancies such as the enigmatic Man-Devil in the travelling Freak Show, or the commercial war between those rival peddlers of electric light Tesla and Edison…

As the vampire hunters arrive, the newspapers are full of lurid tales concerning “the New York Ripper”, but as the determined trio stalk their supernal foe, the eagerly anticipating Nosferatu is keenly watching them…

The end, when it inevitably comes, in ‘Old Enemies are Forever’ isfierce, ferocious and catastrophically brutal… but is it truly final?